Esquire By Jack Holmes Aug 22, 2018
The Senate candidate from Texas told you what he believes. Now you can choose whether to vote for him.
There's a temptation to dismiss the opposition to NFL players' "national anthem protests" as disingenuous or worse, particularly among obviously well-informed public figures. Put simply, the players involved—whom the president has called "sons of bitches" from the rally podium—are not protesting the anthem, or the flag, or our armed forces. They have been very clear that they are protesting racial injustice in policing and the criminal justice system. The national anthem ceremony is the venue, not the subject, of the protest, just as Rosa Parks was not protesting public transportation.
But many Americans simply have misgivings about protests during patriotic ceremonies, because they love the country and it hurts to see it criticized. Because they don't experience them first hand, they don't understand how these problems are so pressing, so morally urgent, that they have to disrupt a fun diversion from a chaotic and frightening world—perhaps the highlight of their week. If we are ever going to put this country back together again, these gaps of understanding must be bridged. And it seems we may have come upon a political figure capable of doing that in one Beto O'Rourke, candidate for United States Senate from the state of Texas.
The young Democrat was asked about the protests at a recent town hall—O'Rourke has visited each of the state's 254 counties—and he unleashed a defense of the athletes' peaceful protest that placed it in the context of a long historical struggle for civil rights in this country. He sees in it an aspect of the ideal American character: a willingness to make your voice heard in opposition to profound injustice.
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https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a22800995/beto-o-rourke-national-anthem-protest-ted-cruz/
